Students react to acceptance to class of 2027

Many cite Open Curriculum, campus culture as draws for applicants

BY OWEN DAHLKAMP SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Late last month, 1,730 regular decision applicants were offered admission to the University, resulting in a total of 2,609 accepted to the class of 2027. The Herald spoke to eight accepted applicants to learn more about their experiences, reactions to their application decisions and what drove them to apply to Brown.

‘It just felt right’: Applying to Brown

“Brown has been my dream school since I was twelve,” said Caroline O’Brien, an early decision admit. “I fell more and more in love with the school, and knew I wanted to go there.”

For Thu Le, an accepted student from San Diego, the open curriculum inspired her decision to apply to the University. That flexibility “would be something that would really make my education much more fulfilling,” Le said.

All accepted applicants who spoke with The Herald expressed a similar sentiment — with Carrington Hughes, from Cleveland, saying that she “wanted flexibility” in her learning. “I really needed that space to be able to say, ‘Oh, I want to change what I'm going to do,’” she added.

Students also cited the campus culture as a draw to the University. “I feel like everything about this campus reflects my own personal morals and my beliefs and really what I want to be surrounded by as a student,” Hughes said.

Many of the prospective students visited campus before applying. “It was just something about the tour,” said Anson Nguyen, an accepted student from Florida,. “It just felt right.”

An 'intense' wait: Anticipating a decision

After months of laboring over personal statements, test scores, video portfolios and other elements of the application, students waited patiently — but anxiously — for their decisions.

Some took a carefree approach. “I was just trying to take my mind off of it,” said Noah Kaufman, an accepted applicant from Austin, Texas. “I figured I'd put in all the work I could to get into my dream school.”

Marissa Guadarrama described “feeling like my life was going to change.” It was “intense,” she said.

‘It was absolutely surreal’: Being ac- that they had a really good diversity of artists. Like there are some hyper pop, there’s indie, there’s rap, there’s R&B, so we're really excited about that.”

“We have a lot of different genres, a lot of different kinds of music,” Adi Thatai ’23, co-chair of BCA’s board, told The Herald before the lineup was announced. “We’ll also hopefully have a lot of songs in there that a lot of people will be able to sing along to.”

Remi Wolf, who will be performing on April 30, first entered the music scene with a short appearance on American Idol in 2014, when she was just a senior in high school. She released her first E p “You’re a Dog!” after graduating from University of Southern California Thornton School of Music in 2018. She has since opened for Lorde, collaborated with Still Woozy, toured solo and